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If you haven’t seen Chris Matthews go, (what I and others affectionately like to refer to as) H.A.M. (Hard as a Mutha@&$) on GOP Chairman Reince Preibus yesterday on Morning Joe, this is for you:

Shorter Chris Matthews: We see you. This is as good as Soledad’s recent smackdowns, yo. Matthews stumbles a bit, but you know something… I ain’t mad. Not one bit. I really, really, really appreciate that the responsibility of calling the GOP in their signaling and race talk strategy is not solely on the shoulders of a person of color or woman. The language is divisive and sometimes, we really need other people (white folks) to speak up when they see it. It means that we’re not crazy or hypersensitive. And no, Tom Brokaw, Romney’s birther joke is not ‘a demonstration of his awkward sense of humor.’ Preibus’ statements about Romney reiterating the validity of Obama’s citizenship to the GOP in this exchange tells me that the ‘joke’ was tactical.

Within the last month, I’ve been quietly observing Romney campaign’s framing (pitting) entitlement programs against each other. Romney’s recent campaign ad against the Affordable Health Care is designed to mislead voters into believing that cuts in Medicare will be applied to W2 recipients who are no longer required to fulfill the work requirement. Randian logic of moochers and freeloaders. And categorically false. The decision to even employ such old ass race baited signaling harkens back to the Reagan years, the constructed mythology of the welfare queen, and less we think that white imagination of a certain age doesn’t connect those things, in concert with Romney’s birther dig, we are kidding ourselves. It just feels so desperate. Like voter suppression efforts even when Romney is outspending Obama.

Romney’s misleading ads are clear indicators that the former Bain Capital executive has no platform for job creation. Bromides and platitudes aside about the virtue of work, ‘getting the country on the right track’, he’s tone deaf on how to do that. Can you name a clear plan or proposal (beyond a tax credit) to stimulate job growth?

SYREETA MCFADDEN is a Brooklyn based writer, photographer and adjunct professor of English. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches and Storyscape Journal. She is the managing editor of the online literary magazine, Union Station, and a co-curator of Poets in Unexpected Places. You can follow her on Twitter @reetamac.

Syreeta McFadden is a contributing opinion writer for The Guardian US and an editor of Union Station Magazine.

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